


The Photograph Kills

by wheel_pen



Series: Lucy [13]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 10:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy is going away to college and wants a memento of Lex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Photograph Kills

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Lucy, my original character, is Clark’s cousin on the Kent side. Although human she may have some strange psychic powers and definitely has some issues in her past. She’s having a tough time with her mom and goes to live with Jonathan and Martha for a while. She and Lex form a relationship.
> 
> 2\. In my world, Lex eventually becomes President. And his staff is from The West Wing. 
> 
> 3\. I started writing this series during the third season of Smallville, so it diverges from canon then or earlier.
> 
> 4\. Underage warning: This story may contain human or human-like teenagers, in high school, in sexual situations.
> 
> 5\. The bad words are censored. That’s just how I do things.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe.

            Lucy stared down at the object in her hand, trying unsuccessfully to hide her dubious expression. Lex’s smile slowly sank into a frown. “Is something wrong?” he finally asked, a bit more sharply than he’d meant to.

            “No, no... well...” Lucy wrinkled her nose and gave him a reluctant look. “It’s just...”

            “What.” His tone was a little cold.

            “It’s just that when I asked for a picture of you, I...” She studied the portrait again.

            “Lucy,” Lex pointed out, crossing his arms over his chest, “there’s only _one_ person in the room who can read minds, and it’s _not_ me.”

            Lucy took a breath. “It’s just... This picture is very—serious.” Not to mention slightly theatrical; where the photographer had gotten a backdrop that looked like an artfully-lit, rain-slicked urban alleyway was beyond her. “I mean, you’re kind of... brooding in it.”

            Lex took the framed photo back and looked it over. “No, I’m not,” he decided. “I look perfectly normal.”

            Lucy moved to stand by him so she could see the picture as well. “You’re not even smiling.”

            “Well, I don’t smile very much,” Lex noted. Maybe he _did_ look a little... pensive. Especially in the black trenchcoat.

            “You smile a lot,” Lucy protested. “You were just smiling a second ago.”

            Lex sighed, handed the photo back to her, and headed for his desk. “Well, I don’t smile very much for professional photographers,” he corrected, digging through some files in an attempt to look busy and avoid eye contact. “I feel ridiculous going to them.”

            This was one of those times, Lucy decided, when patience and understanding were about as sorely needed as they were difficult to summon up. Nonetheless... She gave herself a moment, then put a pleasant smile on her face and approached the desk. “Thank you for the picture, Lex,” she began.

            “Well you don’t have to keep it if you don’t want it,” he told her irritably.

            “No, I want to keep it,” she assured him. “But, I’d also like to take some myself.”

            Lex stopped digging and looked up at her, curious. “You want to take some pictures?”

            She nodded. “Mm-hmm.”

            “What _kind_ of pictures?” he asked, intrigued.

            Lucy rolled her eyes but kept her smile. “Something where you’re smiling.”

            He was smiling now, or half-smiling at least. “Well what do you intend to do, to get me to smile for the camera?”

            “You’ll have to find out when we do it,” she teased him. “So can we schedule our photo shoot?”

            Lex still looked a little bemused by her suggestion, but he finally nodded. “I suppose so.”

            “Good.”

 

            “Here, I like this one a lot.” Lucy indicated the screen of the laptop, which displayed a close-up of Lex’s face bearing an unmistakable smirk.

            The real Lex momentarily looked up from nuzzling her neck and grimaced. “It’s just creepy,” he decided.

            Lucy rolled her eyes and flipped through a few more of the photos. A number of them were out of focus or out of frame—the consequence of trying to take pictures while someone was... jostling you. “Oh, this one’s great,” she enthused, gazing at one. “It’s funny.” Here photo-Lex appeared to be chuckling and glancing away from the camera.

            “It looks devious,” real Lex told her, carefully undoing a few of the top buttons on his shirt, which Lucy was currently wearing.

            He tugged the collar down, baring her shoulders, and started nibbling the skin he’d revealed. For a few moments her arm movements were somewhat restricted, then he undid enough buttons to make the shirt more of a _theory_ than a practical application of fabric, and she was able to scan through more of the pictures on the screen. The mood was momentarily broken when they both spotted one particular photo at the same time and started snickering.

            “Okay, you’re going to delete that one, right?” Lex asked her.

            Lucy looked thoughtful. “Hmmm, I don’t know... There’s something about it, but I can’t quite tell what...”

            “I think it would probably run about... four thousand dollars, street value,” he pointed out more seriously. “If you have others with _actual_ nudity, of course they’d be worth more...”

            Lucy turned and craned her neck over her shoulder for an awkward kiss. “Don’t be stupid,” she told him affectionately. “I wouldn’t sell it to a tabloid. I would just _threaten_ to, so you would continue to pay me.”

            Grinning, Lex gave her bare hip a smack that turned into a caress and he tried to lay her down on the couch they were curled on. “Stop, stop, stop,” Lucy insisted, “I have to finish looking at the pictures first.”

            Lex groaned. “I never should have agreed to this,” he decided, rubbing his leg against her back. “I feel as though you tricked me into it somehow.”

            “Whatever,” she replied, rolling her eyes.

            “Well, hurry up, anyway.”

            “Okay, okay...” Suddenly Lucy stopped on a photo and stared at it. Yes, she decided, this was the one. “This one.”

            “Which one?” he asked boredly.

            “ _This_ one,” she repeated pointedly, indicating that he had to _sit up_ to see it. Sighing, Lex pulled himself back up and looked at the screen.

            “Oh.” It wasn’t quite what he was expecting—he thought she might prefer one of the more posed ones, when she was still telling him to sit here and look this way and think of that and so forth. Instead, he was just sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning forward a bit, with an expression on his face that was just... a smile. Not a huge grin, not a charming smirk, just a real smile that reached his eyes. There was something else strange about it, though...

            “You look so relaxed,” Lucy noted, pleased. That was it, Lex decided. Usually in the photographs of himself he saw—in the tabloids at nightclubs or getting out of limos, in the legitimate press at public relations events, in promotional materials for the company—he looked very... stiff. Tense. Sometimes he was good at faking it, so maybe someone who didn’t know him wouldn’t notice, but he always did. But here he was just... well, Lex really didn’t know _who_ that person was, but he envied him. “I’m gonna keep this one,” Lucy decided. “I’ll just print it out and put it in a frame next to the other one. That way I can have ‘Lex happy,’ and ‘Lex brooding.’ The many moods of Lex.”

            “You think two photos are going to be enough for that?” he asked dryly, finally pulling her down on top of him.

            “Well, my dorm room _is_ rather small,” she reminded him, “so I probably won’t have room for the _full_ spectrum...”


End file.
